This isn't an orientation exactly. I think if this woman was single and childless in an alternate universe, her sex drive would be much different. Female sexuality is so complex. Who knows, maybe she's bored with her husband and her humdrum life? Maybe her lack of exercise has made her into an overweight mom, soenthibbg she doesn't like to see in the mirror?

The man strikes me as one of those guys who says and does anything just to affirm his wife, even if doing so is not in the couple's best interests.

Are you suggesting these people are asexual, or merely that there's an asexuality spectrum? That has to be true. But some behavior is so unusual that I tend to think it has a psychological or physical explanation rather than some hard-wiring "orientation" explanation.

If it is a mutual decision then, God bless. Consensual relationships are formed to meet the needs of the two people involved. I've learned that it's madness for an outsider to assume they understand what makes other people's relationships tick.

Male sexual lifestyle is best understood by Henry VIII's pragmatic approach to sex and marriage. But at least he wanted sons and daughters. His son Edward died young, but then daughters Mary and Elizabeth were ready to do their part next.

Bloody Mary came to the throne as a Catholic absolutist and burned alive the Episcopal Archbishops and thousands of others. But Elizabeth was said to be illegitimate by Papal rules, so when she became Monarch on Mary's death she welcomed home the reformers from Geneva and adopted the half Reformed views that Episcopalians enjoy to this day.

Well, I read the whole article (no offense, but it seems that many of you didn't) and their "happy sexless marriage" seems to be the product of a union of two people with sex drives at the left-hand side of the distribution. It's good that they found each other.

Of course this supposes that her description of the husband is true, which it may not be. But men with low sex drive do exist.

A marriage is considered sexless if sex occurs six or fewer times a year.

In this case, if it is genuinely a mutual decision, I'm happy for them--they found someone truly compatible in each other. The misery is when there a vastly differing expectations made worse when one party unilaterally decides to enforce theirs.

I'm only going by this excerpt, but does the whole piece read as selfish as this "What would I do if my husband wanted more sex? Well, then, he wouldn’t be my husband..."?

I think she's being pragmatic. If she wanted sex six times a year and he six times a week, compromise would be hopeless, intimacy destroyed and the marriage would collapse. Note that she explains just this in the same paragraph.

Why does it have to be a lie? Me and my wife have been married for almost 30 years now. We had an extremely active sex life for the first 10 years of our marriage - deeply passionate, wonderfully caring, and varied in what we both felt comfortable with.

Over time, we have both lost a lot of our drive, but not our love for each other. "Rarely" wold be the right word foe sex now, but our marriage is as strong as ever, we remain very loving and affectionate with each other, and we are both very comfortable and happy with our life together.

There are many paths to a successful marriage, so what is wrong with being happy with little to no sex if that is what both partners want?

“Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.“And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.”William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

My assumption is that whatever people are doing, when they have the power to do other things, it's what they want to do.

Now, if they somehow also think they should want to do something else, they should examine why they think that and if they want to change what they want then they can try, but they'll know what they want when they see what they are doing.

If somebody else has an opinion about the way people should do something other than what they are doing, they need to examine both why they think that AND why they think it's their business.

I assume that they are doing what THEY want to do which is to have opinions about what other people do.

"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling."

But who even tries to restrain sexual desire (for one's partner) in marriage? The opposite is what happens: People try to do what they think they should despite adequate desire. You can disparage others, saying they lack enough desire, but you should see that you don't know whether many proceed to perform acts where they lack sexual desire.

They WANT to do these acts, but why do they want them if they haven't enough desire? Those are the people who seem the saddest, the most conventional.

I think it's better to really have your authentic desire and yet not have sex than to not have authentic sexual desire and yet perform sex anyway.

Of course this supposes that her description of the husband is true, which it may not be. But men with low sex drive do exist.

I'm on the low end of the spectrum --- but I need it at least weekly. I'll do more if the wife wants it, which she tends to do more than I do, since it's definitely not unpleasant and I'd hope she'd return the favor if the situations are reversed.

If it works for them and they are happy good for them. Over the next 50 years you will probably find societal acceptance of a variety of different lifestyles. Multiple partner and multiple couple marriages, communal living, adult/child, human/robot and human/animal are all relationships that will eventually become acceptable in society. People will look back at this period in time and wonder why there was any fuss about gay marriage.